PlayerAuctions Launches Exchange for the Game-Obsessed

PlayerAuctions, a start-up backed by a big Korean company, launched its digital asset exchange for online games Tuesday.

The company is tapping into the demand for markets that allow game players to profit from their heavy investments of time into massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft.

Through the secure auction process on PlayerAuctions, for instance, someone could spend a lot of time collecting gold in a game and then sell it to the highest bidder online. The secure auction process is already in place at Korea’s Itemmania, which is the sole investor in PlayerAuctions.

Itemmania has already done more than 30 million auctions since 2002 in the Korean game market. PlayerAuctions uses the same battle-tested PlayerGuardian secure technology to handle the trades.

PlayerAuctions acts as a kind of escrow agent. When buyers and sellers reach an agreement, PlayerAuctions receives the payment and holds it until the buyer verifies that he received the goods. The company’s fees vary, but generally they run about 10 percent of the transaction amount.

VentureBeat noted that Los Angeles-based PlayerAuctions will face some stiff competition from game publishers who have figured out that players want to get money for their character accounts, digital assets, and other rewards in games.